I'm planning to write a novel that takes place in an alternative history Russia between 1890 and 1915. I want to research the true history to better tweak it, so do you have any suggestions for books I can read on this topic?
Specific topics I'm looking into:
• Russia's relationships with other countries at that time, especially Germany, Finland and Sweden
• Rise of communism in Russia
• Life in a Russian village
• Media access in Russia at that time. What newspapers were there? How good was their coverage?
• Were any industrial/factory jobs available in Russia at that time?
• Marksmanship- what were the weapons available?
• The tsar and his family. I'm already planning to read The Romanov Sisters and Former People for this, but anything else is appreciated.
• The state of medical care in Russia
Other books I'm planning to read as a general overview on culture and history: Spies and Commissars, A People's Tragedy, The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes, Uncle Vanya by Chekhov, books on Baba Yaga, The End of Imperial Russia by Peter Waldron, and The Best of Russian Life: History and Culture.
One of the best introductory surveys for Russian and Soviet history is Theodore Weeks Across the Revolutionary Divide, it covers both the Great Reforms through to the Second World War, but there's a lot of meat in the middle. Although it's not diplomatic history, the empire enfolded multiple nationalities into its borders, such as Germans and Finns, and Andreas Kappler's survey The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History covers the challenges this demographic fact posed to the Romanovs.
For the royal family and its evolving symbolism, few books do it better than Richard Wortmann's Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II. This book approaches the question of how the image of the tsar was part and parcel of state power.
Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia by Alfred Rieber and the anthology Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia covers the social transformation that the introduction of capitalism and modernity wrought in the late imperial period. Since both these books largely cover elite and educated society, it is a good idea to balance those out with the anthology Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia which examines the emergence of a Russian proletariat.
For media and Russia, there's a lot of useful stuff in the urban history of the late empire. Petersburg Fin de Siècle by Mark Steinberg, for example, covers the print culture of the Silver Age. Tales of Old Odessa: Crime and Civility in a City of Thieves by Roshanna P. Sylvester examines the emergence of a lively print culture within a modernizing Russian city. For the wider Russian experience of literacy, When Russia Learned to Read : Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 by Jeffrey Brooks is a good perspective on the growing literacy among the Russian peasantry.
Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in Nineteenth-Century Russia is a monograph that explores how modern small arms were introduced into Russia, but also how their introduction altered labor-relations, military organization, and state industry.
As I recently mentioned elsewhere. A good overview of villag life is presented by Orlando Figes in "Peasant Russia, Civil War"
I wouldn't recommend Richard Pipes' book. All of his writing has a very heavy ideological bent, and has been superseded by more contemporary accounts like Figes' 'A People's Tragedy'